With the proliferation of networked computing and software in all aspects of work and personal life, collaborative services are becoming increasingly popular. In work environments, documents, computing resources, and comparable resources are shared and collaboratively utilized by any number of users. A similar collaboration can also be found in personal computer usage through social networking sites, online services, etc.
While many applications exist that enable users to participate in a “quasi-collaborative” environment, a true collaborative environment with real time sharing and cooperation remains elusive. For example, document sharing service enable users to retrieve, edit, and save documents from a networked resource and allow multiple users to have access to the same document. Changes made by one user to a document while others are working on the same document are not apparent to the other users in real time however, which may lead to degradation of user experience with multiple versions of the same document being created in the end. Alternatively, a shared document may be “locked” for a user and others not allowed to make changes on the original version until that user is done. This approach also defeats the purpose of a collaborative environment.
Thus, users are commonly forced to use external communication means to notify each other (e.g., instant messaging, audio communication, etc.) that one is making changes to an item in a collaborative environment, which brings into question whether the environment is truly collaborative or not.